Project management
4 RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
In this chapter, the case company is introduced, and the overall structure is described.
After the case company introduction, the main findings from interviewing’s are pre-sented. Direct quotes are used to increase the transparency of interviews. At the end of this chapter, findings are analyzed and compared with literature.
4.1 Case company
The thesis target company produces high-quality Power related solutions for Marine busi-ness. Solutions are named “Customer delivery projects” and the Project management or-ganization will be mainly responsible for managing these customer delivery projects. Due to recent organizational changes, when separate business lines merged as a single big organization where project management units from each main business line are merged into a single project management unit. After merging, the project management unit has over 300 personnel and from over 10 countries globally.
Projects which new project management unit manages are usually bundle projects. This means that project can include several target company’s products. The products can be related to propulsion, engines, exhaust gas cleaning systems or power conversion sys-tems. These products are manufactured all over the world, for example, engines depend-ing on the model are manufactured either in Finland, Italy or China. While products are manufactured in multiple countries, it increases the complexity and the need for real-time communication, up-to-date information and unified processes increase significantly.
“The customer is the king, and the contract is the queen” (Berglund 2019). In the target company, the project is succeeding, when a project is delivered within the promised schedule, costs and customer is satisfied with the ordered top-quality solution. The project manager's main responsibilities are to steer the wheel of the project in the right direction with the data and information provided by different functions of the project team. But most of the time is going to use and update the different software’s. This has led to the
situation, where project managers are not gaining actual benefit from existing software’s and instead of gaining support, project managers are supporting other functions by providing data about the projects. The main mission is to follow the contractual terms and satisfy the customer, which is usually the yard constructing the vessels.
4.2 Findings
In this chapter, each section and question are explained, and the results are summarized.
There were four main sections: Background, Project management, Development and cus-tomer reporting. There were 18 open questions. To improve transparency, direct quota-tions are used to highlight the most centric findings. With these 18 quesquota-tions, this research aims to find an answer for: “What challenges project management organization encoun-ters in the global environment?”
To fulfill validity and reliability requirements, the background information about the re-spondent group is required to identify the source of collected data. Background infor-mation provides crucial inforinfor-mation in the analysis phase and reveals possible dependen-cies between answers and background. The background section included questions re-lated to the country of living, position/role, experience from project management, and overall mapping about the organization. The background section included also the de-scription of the target of research and dede-scription of the anonymity and structure of the interview. General respondent information can be seen in table 1.
The background section included questions regarding the current organization structure.
The current organization is formed around two geographical areas, where are area direc-tors. Under areas, are managers or general managers who are responsible for certain coun-tries. Under this managerial line are project managers, resource managers and project engineers. From figure 9, can be seen the general level of area organization structure.
Figure 9. Area-based organization structure.
Overall area-based organizations were considered a positive thing, which enables the tar-get company to concentrate on specific countries and cultures. This, of course, increases the value provided for the customer. Also, the current setup is enabling to get to know colleagues better, because certain people are working within specific areas. Nevertheless, the areas are not strictly fixed, which gives certain flexibility as well as possibilities to acquire new challenges.
“The area organization is good at the moment. The main benefit of this structure is that we can concentrate moreover on certain countries, cultures and time zones. Another
benefit is that project personnel will get to know their team members much better.”
As negative sides of the current setup were the lack of support of the supportive functions around the project management. Project management tends to be between the customer and supportive internal functions which might affect the motivation of these functions.
More transparency from internal processes towards customers was highlighted. The role of area mangers was also disputed. People consider the role of area managers moreover as a supportive role, not a motivator. Therefore, area mangers should have enough au-thority to support and escalate things if needed to achieve the goal of the project.
“About the organizational structure, it feels that we have too many manger lines, who still might lack an authority to support enough project managers”
Another highlighted problem was the lack of one uniform Way-of-Working (WOW).
Even though the concentration from a certain product is moved to the solution level, there still exist product-specific WOW’s which might generate internal problems. This is also considered as confusing because all should be one organization and should follow uni-form WOW. Summarized findings can be seen from figure 10 below.
Figure 10. Summary about the findings concerning organization structure.
4.2.1 Development in Project Management
The project management section's purpose is to exploit in detail project management ar-eas, which are considered as important areas in the target company’s project management.
Another purpose is to identify possible areas where further development, from the per-spective of tools and processes, should be done. Project Management Institute (PMI) has defined 10 knowledge areas of project management, which can be seen in figure 11.
- Customer Centric - Flexible
- Get to know people - Supports global organization
- Area managers role / lack of authority
- Various WOW - Internal process transparency
Figure 11. Ten Knowledge areas of Project Management defined by PMI.
The first questions were considering the roles of project managers and engineers. The target was to have a view if roles are uniform across the project management department globally. Based on the answers, roles are defined well enough to have a clear understand-ing of the role of project manager and engineer. Some respondents were unsure about the extinct of official role definitions and where definitions could be found. There was not a clear variance between roles and country, which indicates that a role definition is clear globally.
“Project manager is responsible for the contract content and knowing your client.
When the scope is clear, you have to deliver the agreed items within the required qual-ity standards and schedule. “
All interviewees highlighted the aspect that roles are defined and therefore role should be fixed, but practically the role is depending on the project and about the project team.
Especially different WoW in different product lines is affecting challenges and confusion.
Some respondents were concerned about the lack of global authority to ensure the imple-mentation of WoW and connecting support functions into project management. As an example, Project Management Office (PMO) could be considered as a solution for this challenge.
“There is an official definition for project engineer role. But sometimes there are situa-tions where the lack of PMO can be seen. For example, PMO is acting as a link
be-tween projects and support functions.”
The last aspect of the roles was the responsibilities, how responsibilities are defined and divided. It seems that overall responsibilities are defined well and commonly agreed but lack of contact person information for nominating project team members is causing dif-ficulties. Sometimes there are also situations when it is hard to find people responsible for certain things and this is considered a waste of efficient time.
One part of recognizing the possible development topics is to exploit activities which are creating workload. Respondents were asked to name three activities, which are consum-ing most of the daily time. When answers are summarized, the followconsum-ing activities were considered the most time consuming:
▪ Meetings
▪ System design
▪ Stakeholder management
▪ Unexpected priority things
▪ Internal communication
▪ Project follow-up
▪ Project technical information
▪ Outsanding actions follow-up
▪ AdHoc Tasks
▪ Maintaining different systems
▪ Progress reporting
▪ External Communication
▪ Component purchasing phase
▪ Gathering documents
▪ Technical specifications
▪ Deliveries
▪ Technical questions
▪ Project planning
Communication and stakeholder management was the most recent activities which were named to be most time-consuming. These both are including internal and external com-munication. Many of the activities can be considered to be normal project management activities which can be included in PMI knowledge areas. Nevertheless, some activities, for example, maintaining different systems are not part of the knowledge areas and could be identified as one possible development topic. Reporting should neither be time-con-suming, but instead reporting should be done automatically, straight from the system, therefore reporting can be identified as second developed area.
In the next question, the interviewee was asked to name three most important PMI knowledge areas that they consider to be the most important ones in their position and the following question was concerning the present status “how current tools are supporting you within these areas?”. The target of these questions was to recognize crucial areas and
in parallel, see if the same areas are named globally in both positions. If certain areas are identified globally, naturally these areas should be reviewed carefully from the perspec-tive of development. The summary from the answers can be seen in table 2.
To understand, how these identified knowledge areas are handled in the target company, the following question asked to describe, how well-identified three knowledge areas are supported by tools and processes in the target company. From table 2, it can be seen, that scope, time & cost were considered most frequently as important knowledge areas. In terms of cost management, part of the respondent considered Cost follow-up function in SAP to be enough in the cost management area. The rest of the respondents were hoping for more development in the cost management area.
“For schedule, there is at the moment only master level and for component level, there is no tool for following that aspect.”
For time management, the currently developed tool was seen as a positive thing, which would cover the time management area well enough. Currently, private excels were used to build a schedule for the project and the need for tools in time management is high. In the area of scope management, the first need would be a tool, where could be seen in the overview of projects and products, which are included in projects. Now project managers and engineers can have several projects to be handled at the same time, which creates the need for overall view.
“The only tool in the cockpit at the moment, which enables the overall picture of my projects. Currently, I am not able to get the whole picture from other tools.”
Table 2. Summary from identified PMI knowledge areas.
Another relevant group on knowledge areas were Communication, Risk, and Quality management. Interviewees who named communication as important knowledge areas
Areas considered as
im-portant Areas to be improved
Integration Management 1 3
Scope Management 5 4
Time Management 5 1
Cost Management 5 6
Quality Management 4 3
Procurement Management - 3
Human resource
Manage-ment - 1
Communication
Manage-ment 4 1
Risk Management 4 4
Stakeholder Management 2 4
thought commonly that there is room to improve in tools and processes when talking about communication. The lack of common processes for reporting, communicating and sharing information were highlighted. Another concern that was considered to decrease the efficiency of communication was the lack of commonplace where project-related data would be stored.
“At the moment often the project manager has to ask separately status update and in-formation from supporting functions, so tools and processes do not properly support the
information flow from supporting functions towards the project manager.”
In risk management, interviewees were not seeing any relevant tool or process to manage risks. Risk management is mostly concentrating to follow the money flow of the project and the main risk is controlled with down payments. For quality management, interview-ees saw that quality is the main aspect of project management. One highlighted aspect is that project management has moved moreover towards customers from products, which will create possibilities, as well as challenges in, are of quality.
“Cockpit and soon the checklist function in it are essential for PM, helping to keep the contractual commitments and sometimes triggering inquiries to a customer of schedule
validity.”
To reveal areas, where possible development in tools and processes should be done, the next question was concerning PMI knowledge areas and in which areas, interviewees saw the opportunity to have development done. Interviewees named three potential knowledge areas and results can be seen from the right column of table 2. Most of the interviewees concerned Cost management as an area where tools and processes are needed, other important areas were stakeholder-, risk- and scope management.
The final question in the project management area was concerning the changes in project management and how interviewees are seeing the change while they have been working in the target company. Overall, interviewees were sawing big changes during their time in project management. The biggest change which each respondent was stating was the
transformation from product-centric to moreover customer-centric organizational struc-ture, which is known as an area structure. Before, project management was formed around the products, where each product line had own project management. Other notable changes that interviewees highlighted were the changes in the internal focus areas. There have been several different focus areas which are changed when new challenges have appeared. Most of the interviewees were complaining about the speed of transformation and the lack of time to ensure proper implementation of each change.
“The positive thing nowadays is the localization, meaning that Project management is closer to the customer than before and the negative is the speed of changes, especially
in organizational level.”
The target of questions related to development was to examine how the development team has been doing development from the perspective of project managers and engineers. In the area of development, one critical aspect is the actual implementation of the developed thing. How you communicate and manage the process and achieve the successful imple-mentation of newly developed things. Also, it is crucial to understand, the locational as-pects and how it is affecting the successful implementation. In question, the development team is concerning the Quality & Documentation team.
Currently, there are two development types within the target company, The OE and op-erational development (OD). The OE related development is done within specific waves that have the defined start and end date. The duration of the OE wave is determined as 100 days. The OD does not have a fixed duration or specific start and end dates. OD is mainly done with the time and iterative process is commonly used. Many time-consuming tool development activities are concerned mainly in the area of OD. The main character-istics of these two development approaches can be seen in figure 12.
Figure 12. Definitions of OE & OD
The first question was considering the development team’s support and guidance towards the project personnel, practically how the development team has been succeeding in sup-porting and training new things for end-users. The questions were formalized in the way that possibility for interviewer bias is minimized. Another aspect was to collect overall feedback from project managers and engineers when there is no organizational superior setup present. All interviewees were agreeing that the current support and guidance pro-vided by the development team are at a good level and no actions needed in that area.
Ongoing development was seen as important, and results have been concrete, which means that results can be seen on the operative side as well. Some interviewees were concerned about the speed of Operational Excellence waves (OE) and where considering that 100 days are in some cases insufficient.
“The development has been good, especially within tools. The guidance and support have been at a good level, but for the cockpit, the overall responsible matrix would be a
good addition.”
The next questions were considering the transparency of development. To succeed in de-velopment, the purpose of development must be clear. For this purpose, persons from
operational and end-user levels are invited to take apart in development. The transparency of development progress and ideas are crucial for end-users to whom the actual develop-ment will affect. Moreover, when ideas are communicated clearly, these persons can pro-vide their valuable knowledge about certain aspects of what the development team has not considered.
The answers were well balanced, apart from respondents were considering the transpar-ency as enough, when another part was requiring more transpartranspar-ency and overall mapping from ideas and development initiatives. The following question was considering the will-ingness to participate in development initiatives. Most respondents were interested to par-ticipate in the development, where a couple of interviewees was not sure would they like to involve. The most common reason for unsureness was the development topic and is it interesting. Some respondents were also highly involved in the development and were considering letting others participate as well.
Table 3. Willingness to participate into development initiatives.
Yes No Maybe
Respondents 4 1 5
The last question in the area of development was to get an overall picture of, what peo-ple are expecting from the development team. The expectations from the operative side are important to acknowledge because then actual development can more efficiently be concentrated to support as expected. Generally, people were expecting the development team to find more efficient ways to do things as before, supporting and communicating closely with project personnel. Requirements to collect more efficiently feedback and lessons learned from “the field” were highlighted.
“They would find one single tool for project management.”
4.2.2 Stakeholder Reporting in Project management
One possible area, where significant development can be done from the target company side is reporting towards the customer. Often reporting requirements are coming from contract level, therefore reporting is an important aspect that should be done within con-tractual terms. The purpose of questions related to reporting was to map the possibilities
One possible area, where significant development can be done from the target company side is reporting towards the customer. Often reporting requirements are coming from contract level, therefore reporting is an important aspect that should be done within con-tractual terms. The purpose of questions related to reporting was to map the possibilities